n decision no. 12-85.830 of 27 November 2013, the criminal chamber of the Court of Cassation dismissed the appeal made by a company contesting the validity of all garnishments undertaken claiming notably that letters had been garnished in an indifferent manner whilst some had been considered as ineligible for garnishment as they were covered by confidentiality (client/lawyer exchanges), or privacy as defined by articles 6 and 8-1 of the European Convention on the protection of human rights and article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

It results from this decision that the presence, amongst the disputed files, of documents not eligible for garnishment may not lead to any lack of validity of all other documents being garnished.

It should be reiterated that the software programme used for garnishment could only lead to an overall garnishment of files included in the email inbox and that all documents garnished were copied and returned to the company before the end of the operations, so as to allow it to raise any objections as to the documents which should be excluded.